Local Midnight in the Vacuum Bar
by Blaze O'Glory
Summary: A vacuum bar is where you'll find the loners and the losers, the weirdos and the misfits. That's why we're here, anyway: the crew of the Shockeye, tying one on in memory of our dear departed Keya. Absent friends, all that.


**Local Midnight at the Vacuum Bar**

**by Blaze O'Glory**

A vacuum bar is where you'll find the loners and the losers, the weirdos and the misfits. That's why we're here, anyway: the crew of the _Shockeye_, tying one on in memory of our dear departed Keya. Absent friends, all that.

_Shockeye_'s berthed, safe inside this battered old trading station, orbiting some dusty little world, on the tail end of a run through half a dozen fringe systems. It's not a busy place. Traffic's light; maybe once every few hours a ship comes sliding in from out the deep, or launches out to crack a wormhole to some other star.

We glide up out the airlock, into the domed cage of the vacuum bar. The station's hull spreads out, silver in the starlight, turning slow beneath our feet. Gives us a horizon we can all agree on, if we feel the need. We've got the place to ourselves almost: a few drifters here and there, suited and anonymous, but it's the _Shockeye_'s crew making all the noise on the common band.

The planet and the system's sun are out of sight, hidden down below the station's bulk. All I can see are stars, stars, stars, and us just hanging here among them. We hook ourselves in, mating suit umbilicals to nozzles sprouting from the bar's fretwork structure, dialling up a choice of poison, metered by the millilitre. Having one for her, shouting out her name on an open channel. We toast the life and mourn the death of Keya, spacer to her tiger soul.

Captain Malaco emerges last, clamping his feet onto the bar's struts and stanchions. He's the only one here not suited up; that silver carapace, that's all him. Had his exoskeleton replaced. Started off with getting his kneejoints made airtight, apparently, after an accident in an airlock, oh, years and years ago. Then his foreclaws and dorsal plating, so I'm told, and it just went on from there. When your species strolls around inside a shell anyway, I suppose it makes a kind of sense.

_The attack comes swiftly, raiders sharking in with engines flaring. Captain Malaco hisses, and snaps a curt command. On the scanner the blip that marks the _Nix_ darts forward. _

The _Nix_ was Keya's, Krait-class, a small singleship fighter. It was outdated, pushing obsolete maybe, but it was her own: she held it free and clear, she kept it running sweet, and she could throw that thing around to tie you up in knots. The _Shockeye_'s crew are either wholly owned, or – like me – slowly paying off their indentures (Keya said Malaco only bought mine, from my father back on Ara, because I looked like I'd be cheap to feed). Keya, though, she was an independent, paid an escort fee to fly outrider on the _Shockeye_, and the bonus rates she'd prised from old Malaco's claws made her a hero to those of us who have to hand him back most everything we earn.

_The _Shockeye_'s bridge is small, cramped, almost entirely filled by Captain Malaco, an armoured silver hulk squatting over the command console. Wedged into one corner, almost as an afterthought, sits his copilot: a skinny, undersized youth, not much more than a boy._

I'd like to think that the Captain put me in the copilot's chair because he recognised my potential, my coolness under pressure. More likely though he agreed to it because I'm kind of small for my age: Malaco takes up a lot of room, and he just keeps on getting bigger, year on year. Every now and then he'll take the _Shockeye_ somewhere skilled, get himself some new tweak: an O2 rebreather, magnetic feet, a micro-fusion plant, all kinds of stuff. Keya said one day he'd get himself a witchdrive fitted, and punch out his own wormholes, and then she'd take the _Shockeye_ off his hands as surplus to requirements.

_Captain Malaco rolls the _Shockeye_ round, twisting the fat Boa-class merchant ship to present the smallest target profile to her onrushing enemies. His copilot preps the _Shockeye_'s defences, spinning up her anti-missile systems, and locks the three pirate vessels into the targeting computer._

Keya was good to have around. The first time I found that out was five years back almost, when I had just been bought in to _Shockeye_'s crew and still had Ara's dirt between my toes. We were unloading, all hands, and I was so green I didn't know the difference between _weight_ and _mass_. Working in the microgravity of the docking bay, manoeuvring the huge containers, I missed a catch with my gee grab and thought I could stop the canister smacking into the bulkhead if I just stepped in there and stuck my arms out. It was moving so slowly … Lucky for me that Keya moved fast, darting in above me, long legs absorbing the energy as she landed feet first on the bay wall. She grabbed me by the hair and threw me clear, just as the rogue container crunched home right where I'd been standing. I finished up, more or less unhurt, upside down in some cargo netting, while the crew whooped and clapped and Keya turned a slow and elegant somersault to land gracefully on the bay floor. After the job was over she swung by again, and presented me with a concoction of meat and spices all bundled up in chewy flatbread, saying maybe I should gain some mass of my own before I tried arguing with cargo canisters.

_The raiders fan out. One ship – an Asp, a heavy fighter – targets the _Nix_. The other two – a scarred and pitted Python freighter, and an ageing Fer-de-lance, long past its prime but still sleek, and built for combat – close in on the _Shockeye_. _

Once we were riding this wormhole, and Captain Malaco got sick. Well, not sick; something wrong with his power grid, I think. Anyhow, he seized up on us, had problems breathing, too. There was a bit of panic by the time we burst back into real space: who was going to take the _Shockeye_ in? No-one else on board had a pilot's ticket; in any case, the controls were custom-built for a three-ton cyborg lobster with claws that could cut sheet steel. The _Shockeye_ didn't even have a copilot's chair back then; I was still on scutwork. Keya came on the blower, though, and she drummed up a plan. Lug the Captain off the bridge, she said, get him down to the engine room, and try to stabilise his systems; meanwhile open up the cargo bay and she'd park the _Nix_ in there, come aboard, and fly us in. So there I was, down in the hold inside a suit two sizes too big, trying to see out over the neck ring and guiding Keya in to a bay that was two sizes too small. The _Shockeye_'s engines hung over the bay doors, still running hot, but she nudged and teased the _Nix_ on in there. She wedged her ship's nose right in the doorway, cracked the canopy, threw me a grin and a wave and dived off to the bridge. I spent the rest of that trip using every cargo tie and gee grab we had to lash the _Nix_ in place, the blue glare from _Shockeye_'s drive pulsing through the open doors. I was running pretty low on air by the end but somehow Keya flew us in, got us docked and locked, brought us all home safe.

_Captain Malaco squats low over the _Shockeye_'s controls, teasing the ship's nose around in a delicate spiral as the Fer-de-lance and Python open fire. _Shockeye_'s shields spark and spit, her reactor thumping deep down inside her. Malaco cocks his head and twists the yoke, one spare leg stamping down hard on the fuel injectors. On the viewscreen the stars blur and spin: the tail end of the Asp fills _Shockeye_'s gunsights as the _Nix_ pirouettes away to drop onto the Python's stern. Malaco grunts and squeezes the triggers: _Shockeye_'s huge laser lashes out, collapsing the Asp's rear shield in a white-hot flare of radiation._

Then there was the time in Terea Station, when two identical, drunken Ceedrans tried to call her out. She was on the habitation deck, dickering with a technician and looking to get some new gizmo for the _Nix_, I guess, and I was just passing on my way from delivering the _Shockeye_'s papers to the dockmaster. Suddenly these two lizards blunder up, there was a push or a shove or a collision and the tech was slamming down his shutter and the Ceedrans – never backward when coming forward, as they say – they were hauling out these wicked-looking blades. Keya's eyes were wide but she set her feet and had started to smile, or show her teeth, anyway, when I came running up from behind and kicked one of the Ceedrans, by sheer good luck, right in the cloaca. He let out a high-pitched whistle through his nose and dropped like he'd been shot. His twin spun round, bug-eyes swivelling in two different directions, waving his machete above his head – and Keya kicked him in the back of his knee, grabbed his wrist, twisted, and had him disarmed and flat on the floor when the station cops ran up and splatted all four of us with capsicum glueballs. My eyes were streaming but I could hear Keya coughing and laughing as they dragged us off to the Merchants' court. I thought I was dead meat for sure – the fine for brawling was more than Captain Malaco had paid for my entire fifteen-year indenture – but not only did he pay the score, when I got back to the _Shockeye_ I found myself in training for the newly fitted copilot's chair, with a microscopic increase in personal allowance on top. Keya said that I had a knack for it, that I knew the importance of getting on your opponent's tail and plugging him in his weak spot.

_The Asp lights up its drive and slams away from the fight, venting plasma from a ruptured coil. Captain Malaco drums four of his feet on the floor, closes down the throttle and flips the _Shockeye_ up and over. She rolls towards the two remaining pirate ships. The _Nix_ is stitching fire all down the Python's belly. The copilot punches up the Fer-de-lance as the priority target, and Malaco clicks his jaws and brings the daggerlike craft spinning into his crosshairs._

There are still a few calls going out on the common band, but mostly now the crew have switched to closed channels. One or two are opting for more private conversation yet, turning off their comms and leaning in together, touching visors.

_The _Shockeye'_s laser stabs out again, a muffled roar rising from within the ship as exchanger pumps fight against the weapon's soaring temperature. The Fer-de-lance spins away, its shield flickering. The _Nix_ smashes down the Python's shields and carves a glowing gash along its flank. An alarm warbles as the Python, desperate, launches a missile. Captain Malaco drives the _Shockeye_ on a tight arc, feathering the engines, dragging the Fer-de-lance back into his sights. The copilot punches the _Shockeye_'s countermeasures, sending a massive electromagnetic wave surging out into surrounding space. The pulse catches the Python's missile; it ruptures in a spray of sparking fragments, disintegrating harmlessly. The _Shockeye_'s engines groan as they labour to recharge the ECM. _

I remember the twist of her mouth when she smiled, the tilt of her jaw when she laughed. There is nothing left of her, now. I'll never see her again.

_A titanic flash marks the Python's destruction. The _Shockeye_ pounds at the Fer-de-lance. The _Nix_ is swinging round. The Fer-de-lance rolls again, a long missile sliding out obscenely from its belly._

_The copilot slams the ECM._

_The alarm warbles._

Shockeye_'s laser burns a terrible hole in the pirate's hull._

_The ECM hisses, not yet fully charged._

_The missile's engine fires, its tiny pinprick mind seeking death._

_The Fer-de-lance explodes._

_The boy reaches out to slam the ECM again._

_Out of the explosion the missile surges upwards._

_And the _Nix_, darting back, takes it in her gut._

Nothing and never. The alcohol burns a hot track down through my chest, sliding around the void I feel inside me.

The crew are mostly quiet, now. Some have even unclipped their umbilicals; doesn't do to drink too much inside a vacuum bar. Captain Malaco, over to one side, is talking with a Sidewinder pilot. Looks like he's bargaining for a replacement escort; I see two of his forelegs flick the signal _money_. His dorsal plates fan out, dumping a little waste heat. The starlight slides across his silver skin. Nothing touches him inside that shell.

I wonder how long it takes to get that way.

* * *

_This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit _

**/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/**

_Copyright © Blaze O'Glory 2010 {]_

Local Midnight in the Vacuum Bar _is based on the universe of _Oolite_ by Giles Williams, _Elite_ by Ian Bell and David Braben, and draws on numerous contributions by the Oolite community. _


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